Inquiring Minds
by inkandpaperqwerty
Summary: Lucifer has no idea how long he'll be in the Cage this time around, and unfortunately for him, he forgot how breakable humans can be. "Luc—Lucifer. If you take holy water, and you—you freeze it into ice. You know, like—like a block of ice. Does it… become more or less effective?" Oh, well. At least Sam is relatively entertaining when his brain is a bowl of scrambled eggs.


"Lucifer. Luc—Lucifer."

_Just ignore it. He'll give up eventually._

"Lucifer, I have to—this is important."

_Granted, he hasn't given up for the past two days, so… _

"Lucifer. Lucifer. Lucifer."

_At what point does it become more painful to ignore him than to engage in conversation? _

"Lucifer. Luuucifer. Luuucifeeerr—"

"_What, _Sam?" Lucifer turned blazing eyes to the drooling human collapsed on the floor beside him. "What could it _possibly _be _this _time?"

Sam didn't seem fazed by the scarlet eyes or the anger in Lucifer's voice, his own eyes vacantly wandering over the ceiling as he slurred out his inquiry. "If you take holy water, and you—you freeze it into ice. You know, like—like a block of ice. Does it… become more or less effective?"

Lucifer lowered his head into his hands and groaned.

"I mean, like… what happens to the—to the holiness? And then if you melt it again after… or like, um, like wet air. Steam? Steam." Sam dragged his arm haphazardly across his mouth, smearing bloody drool from his lips to his hairline. "Does steam work, too?"

"I'll have to add that to the list of things I gave absolutely no thought to when creating demons." Lucifer drawled the words, letting his head fall back against the wall. He sometimes wondered if there was a permanent imprint on his Grace from the grate-like pattern of the Cage.

"Lucifer…"

Lucifer sighed.

Really, he had no one to blame but himself—not that he would ever admit it—and blame wouldn't fix anything anyway. He had just been so angry when he was dragged back into the Cage after what felt like mere days of freedom. He had torn into Sam with every sadistic urge he had woven into his essence. He had gone after him like a shark after blood, like a Rit Zen after suffering, not taking the time to really think his actions through.

Unlike most people, Sam had not separated from his body before his plummet to the bottom of the Pit. His body had gone with him, and along with it, all its affinity for _breaking._

"Why did you name them demons? Actually—actually, why did God name the angels, um angels?" Sam gestured vaguely to the ceiling, his arm dropping to the metal floor with a thud. "Like, humans name things with languages, you know, Latin and stuff, but—like, why didn't you name them something in Enochian? And if God existed _before—before _Enochian, why did—like, how did He name the angels?"

"He pulled names from a hat." Lucifer deadpanned. "Or maybe He sneezed, and whatever it sounded like, He went with."

Sam laughed hysterically, rolling over until his head hit Lucifer's thigh and then flinching away instinctively. "God—God sneezes? And it sounds like 'angels?'" He giggled again, higher, shriller. "Angels!" he shouted, huffing out a poor imitation of a sneeze.

Lucifer sighed again and rubbed his forehead, cursing his own lake of foresight. He could shut Sam up, sure, but it only made things worse. Every time Lucifer snapped and smothered that _irritating _laughter out of Sam along with all his oxygen, or any time Lucifer snapped and, well, _snapped _Sam's neck, Sam always came back worse.

Not drooling or asking stupid questions. _That_ was actually amusing on a good day. No, he came back and curled into a ball and whimpered. He mumbled to himself, chanting a disoriented string of apologies and calls for his brother, and he cried, and he rocked on the floor. Every murder brought him back a little louder and a little more hysterical, until Lucifer was forced to play Dean and soothe Sam into the less annoying state of stupid questions and delirium.

One of Hell's worst features working against Lucifer, of all people; making him show mercy.

But anything was better than hours of, 'Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, _Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean.'_

Anything.

"So, um—so, so why did—like why do some names stay? Like, nobody—nobody names their kid Lucifer or Castiel, but there's ten million Michaels and Gabriels. Like, what's up with that?"

"Aesthetic," was the flat reply.

"That's dumb." Sam turned his head suddenly and looked at his arm, at the gaping wound that ran from elbow to middle finger, cutting all the way down to the bone. "_That's_ dumb." He let his head fall back the other way, staring up at Lucifer with dilated, glassy, bloody eyes. "_You're_ dumb."

Lucifer glared.

He glared, but he couldn't do anything about it. That was how he wound up with a braindead vessel in the first place. Human souls were far more durable than human bodies, human minds. Human souls could survive eons of endless torment and pain—not happily, not unscathed, not without becoming twisted, but they _could _survive.

Human bodies and minds couldn't.

Hell kept its prisoners alive against their will. It had no failsafe to keep them _sane._

"Lucifer. Lucifer. Lucifer."

_Not this again…_

"Lucifer. Luc—"

"What," he sighed, "Sam?"

"Can I go home now?"

Lucifer sighed again. "No, Sam."

"Oh." Sam looked dejected for a fraction of a second—he processed an answer for a fraction of a second—but then his mind tumbled back into the sludgy haze, and he giggled. "Lucifer, did you ever play pranks on each other? Like, in Heaven? I used to do that with Dean." He laughed again. "I superglued his hand to a beer bottle." He laughed again, a high-pitched trill that dissolved into a sigh halfway through. "I miss Dean."

That was never good. That was always followed by—

Lucifer groaned, probably louder than he needed to. "Really? Do we have to do the crying thing every time?"

Sam didn't reply. He never did. He just rolled over, let out a few sobs, and then started banging his head on the floor of the Cage.

"Okay. That's enough of that." Lucifer grabbed Sam by the hair and easily dragged him closer, ignoring the pained yelp as he situated the human's head in his lap. "Bedtime."

Sam choked out another cry. "Can't sleep down here."

"No, but we can lie very still and quiet and pretend, can't we?" Lucifer gave Sam a cross between a sweet smile and a sardonic smirk. "That means it's shut up time."

Sam opened his mouth to object, saliva dribbling down his chin.

"Nope." Lucifer took Sam's hair in one hand and put his other hand on Sam's side. "You shut up, I pet you. You make noise, I do this." He gave the hair in his hand a rough twist. "Capice?"

Sam sniffled but nodded, falling silent as Lucifer began to pet his side, sliding his hand from ribcage to hip on a loop.

And Lucifer settled in for another decade, letting out a sigh and staring up at the ceiling. Briefly, he considered what he would do if he ever got out again… and for a moment, he actually thought _maybe _the best course of action would be to lay low.

"Lucifer?"

Lucifer sighed and gave Sam's hair a hard twist, pulling out several clumps.

Sam yelped but spoke again anyway. "Um… I'm sorry I put you back in here." He sniffed and looked up at Lucifer with wide, crazy but sincere eyes. "I understand why you wanted out." He sniffed again, blood trickling down both sides of his face from his hairline. "We were just protecting our home."

"Remember what time it is, Sam?"

Sam blinked. "Shut up time?"

Lucifer pressed his lips together in a tight smile and nodded. "Yeah." He gave Sam's hair another twist, much lighter than the one before it. "Lie down and shut up now."

Sam nodded his head and did as he was told.

Lucifer watched him in silence, wishing with every fiber of his being that he could be outside again. He was genuinely considering a peaceful return to Earth, too. It would be far from the preferred outcome, but it would be just as far from the worst-case scenario, which was yet another trip to the Cage.

_Hmm… I'll see how I feel in a thousand years._

"Go ahead and ask your questions, Sam." Lucifer sighed, still petting Sam to keep him calm. "We've got to kill the time somehow."

"Okay!" Sam was entirely too chipper for someone lying on Satan's lap with a bloody, torn scalp and a body more broken than together. "Why did you make demons sensitive to salt? I get the holy water… but salt?"

_Like I said… gotta kill the time somehow. _

"Well, Sam, to explain that, I have to explain how and why I made demons in the first place." Lucifer took a deep breath. "It all started the day I realized I hate everything."


End file.
